The Night Visitor

by B. TRAVEN

  “That money would do me no good. If I spent only one single coin they’d clap me in jail right away and there torture me until I’d tell them where I stole it, and after that they’d chop off one hand of mine for being a thief. What could I, a woodchopper, do with one hand less when, in fact, I could use four if only the Lord had been kind enough to let me have that many.”

  Macario, utterly unconcerned over the Charro’s insistence, once more tried to tear off the leg and start eating when the visitor interrupted him again: “See here, friend, I own these woods, the whole woods, and all the woods around here, and I’ll give you these woods in exchange for just one wing of your turkey and a fistful of the fillings. All these woods, think of it.”

  “Now you’re lying, stranger. These woods are not yours, they’re the Lord’s, or I couldn’t chop in here and provide the villagers with fuel. And if they were your woods and you’d give them to me for a gift or in payment for a part of my turkey, I wouldn’t be any richer anyhow because I’d have to chop them just as I do now.”

  Said the Charro: “Now listen, my good friend——”

  “Now you listen,” Macario broke in impatiently. “You aren’t my good friend and I’m not your good friend and I hope I never will be your good friend as long as God saves my soul. Understand that. And now go back to hell where you came from and let me eat my holiday dinner in peace.”

  The Charro made a horribly obscene grimace, swore at Macario and limped off, cursing the world and all mankind.

  Macario looked after him, shook his head and said to himself: “Who’d expect to meet such funny jesters in these woods? Well, I suppose it takes all kinds of people and creatures to make it truly our Lord’s world.”

  He sighed and laid his left hand on the turkey’s breast as he had done before and with his right grasped one of the fowl’s legs.

  And again he noted two feet standing right before him at the same spot where, only a half minute earlier, the Charro had been standing.

  Ordinary huaraches, well-worn as though by a man who has wandered a long and difficult road, covered these two feet. Their owner was quite obviously very tired and weary, for his feet seemed to sag at the arches.

  Macario looked up and met a very kind face, thinly bearded. The wanderer was dressed in very old, but well-washed, white cotton pants and a shirt of the same stuff, and he looked not very different from the ordinary Indian peasant of the country.

  The wanderer’s eyes held Macario’s as though by a charm and Macario became aware that in this pilgrim’s heart were combined all the goodnesses and kindnesses of earth and heaven, and in each of the wanderer’s eyes he saw a little golden sun, and each little golden sun seemed to be but a little golden hole through which one might crawl right into heaven and see Godfather Himself in all His glory.

  With a voice that sounded like a huge organ playing from a distance far away, the wanderer said: “Give unto me, my good neighbor, as I shall give unto you. I am hungry, very hungry indeed. For see, my beloved brother, I have come a long way. Pray, let me have that leg which you are holding and I shall truly and verily bless you for it. Just that leg, nothing else. It will satisfy my hunger and it will give me new strength, for very long still is my way before reaching my father’s house.”

  “You’re a very kind man, wanderer, the kindest of men that ever were, that are today, and that are to come,” Macario said, as though he was praying before the image of the Holy Virgin.

  “So I beg of you, my good neighbor, give me just one half of the bird’s breast, you certainly will not miss it much.”

  “Oh, my beloved pilgrim,” Macario explained as if he were speaking to the archbishop whom he had never seen and did not knew but whom he believed the highest of the highest on earth. “If you, my Lord, really mean to say that I won’t miss it much, I shall answer that I feel terribly hurt in my soul because I can’t say anything better to you, kind man, but that you are very much mistaken. I know I should never say such a thing to you for it comes close to blasphemy, yet I can’t help it, I must say it even should that cost me my right to enter heaven, because your eyes and your voice make me tell the truth.

  “For you see, your Lordship, I must not miss even the tiniest little morsel of this turkey. This turkey, please, oh please, do understand, my Lord, was given me as a whole and was meant to be eaten as a whole. It would no longer be a whole turkey were I to give away just a little bit not even the size of a fingernail. A whole turkey—it was what I have yearned for all my life, and not to have it now after a lifetime of praying for it would destroy all the happiness of my good and faithful wife who has sacrificed herself beyond words to make me that great gift. So, please, my Lord and Master, understand a poor sinner’s mind. Please, I pray you, understand.”

  And the wanderer looked at Macario and said unto him: “I do understand you, Macario, my noble brother and good neighbor, I verily do understand you. Be blessed for ever and ever and eat your turkey in peace. I shall go now, and on passing through your village I shall go near your hut where I shall bless your good wife and all your children. Be with the Lord. Good-bye.”

  Not once while he had made these speeches to the Charro and to the wanderer had it occurred to Macario, who rarely spoke more than fifty words a day, to stop to think what had made him so eloquent—why it was that he, in the depths of the woods, could speak as freely and easily as the minister in church and use words and expressions which he had never known before. It all came to him without his realizing what was happening.

  He followed the pilgrim with his eyes until he could see him no longer.

  He shook his head sadly.

  “I most surely feel sorry about him. He was so very tired and hungry. But I simply could do nothing else. I would have insulted my dear wife. Besides, I cannot spare a leg or part of the breast, come what may, for it would no longer be a whole turkey then.”

  And again he seized the turkey’s leg to tear it off and start his dinner when, again, he noted two feet standing before him and at the same spot the others had stood a while ago.

  These two feet were standing in old-fashioned sandals, and Macario thought that the man must be a foreigner from far-off lands, for he had never seen sandals like these before.

  He looked up and stared at the hungriest face he had ever believed possible. That face had no flesh. It was all bone. And all bone were the hands and the legs of the visitor. His eyes seemed to be but two very black holes hidden deep in the fleshless face. The mouth consisted of two rows of strong teeth, bared of lips.

  He was dressed in a faded bluish-white flowing mantle which, as Macario noted, was neither cotton nor silk nor wool nor any fabric he knew. He held a long staff in one hand for support.

  From the stranger’s belt, which was rather carelessly wound around his waist, a mahogany box, scratched all over, with a clock ticking audibly inside, was dangling on a bit of a string.

  It was that box hanging there instead of the hourglass which Macario had expected that confused him at first as to what the new visitor’s social standing in the world might be.

  The newcomer now spoke. He spoke with a voice that sounded like two sticks clattering one against the other.

  “I am very hungry, compadre, very, very hungry.”

  “You don’t need to tell me. I can see that, compadre,” Macario asserted, not in the least afraid of the stranger’s horrible appearance.

  “Since you can see that and since you have no doubt that I need something substantial in my stomach, would you mind giving me that leg of the turkey you are holding?”

  Macario gave forth a desperate groan, shrugged and lifted up his arms in utter helplessness.

  “Well,” he said, with mourning in his voice, “what can a poor mortal do against fate? I’ve been caught at last. There’s no way out any more. It would have been a great adventure, the good God in heaven knows it, but fate doesn’t want it that way. I shall never have a whole turkey for myself, never, never and never, so what can I do?
I must give in. All right, compadre, get your belly’s fill; I know what hunger is like. Sit down, hungry man, sit down. Half the turkey’s yours and be welcome to it.”

  “Oh, compadre, that is fine, very fine,” said the hungry man, sitting down on the ground opposite Macario and widening his row of teeth as if he were trying to grin.

  Macario could not make out for sure what the stranger meant by that grin, whether it was an expression of thanks or a gesture of joy at having been saved from a sure death by starvation.

  “I’ll cut the bird in two,” Macario said, in a great hurry now lest another visitor might come up and make his own part a third only. “Once I’ve cut the bird in two, you just look the other way and I’ll lay my machete flat between the two halves and you tell which half you want, that next to the edge or that next to the back. Fair enough, Bone Man?”

  “Fair enough, compadre.”

  So they had dinner together. And a mighty jolly dinner it was, with much clever talking on the part of the guest and much laughter on the side of the host.

  “You know, compadre,” Macario presently said, “at first I was slightly upset because you didn’t fit into the picture of you I had in my mind. That box of mahogany with the clock in it which you carry hanging from your belt confused me quite a bit and made it hard for me to recognize you promptly. What has become of your hourglass, if it isn’t a secret to know?”

  “No secret at all, no secret at all. You may tell the world if it itches you to do so. You see, it was like this. There was a big battle in full swing somewhere around Europe, which is the fattest spot on earth for me next to China. And I tell you, compadre, that battle kept me on the run as if I were still a youngster. Hither and thither I had to dart until I went nearly mad and was exhausted entirely. So, naturally, I could not take proper care of myself as I usually do to keep me fit. Well, it seems a British cannon ball fired in the wrong direction by a half-drunken limey smashed my cherished hourglass so completely that it could not be mended again by old smith Pluto who likes doing such odd jobs. I looked around and around everywhere, but I could not buy a satisfactory new one since they are made no longer, save for decorations on mantel pieces which, like all such silly knickknacks, are useless. I tried to swipe one in museums, but to my horror I discovered that they were all fakes, not a genuine instrument among them.”

  A chunk of tender white meat which he chewed at this instant let him forget his story for a while. Remembering that he had started to tell something without finishing it, he now asked: “Oh, well, where was I with my tale, compadre?”

  “The hourglasses in all the museums were all fakes wherever you went to try one out.”

  “Right. Yes, now isn’t it a pity that they build such wonderful great museums around things which are only fakes? Coming back to the point: there I was without a correctly adjusted hourglass, and many mistakes were bound to happen. Then it came to pass not long afterwards that I visited a captain sitting in his cabin of a ship that was rapidly sinking away under him and with the crew all off in boats. He, the captain I mean, having refused to leave his ship, had hoisted the Union Jack and was stubbornly sticking by his ship whatever might happen to her, as would become a loyal British captain. There he now sat in his cabin, writing up his log-book.

  “When he saw me right before him, he smiled at me and said: ‘Well, Mr. Bone Man—Sir, I mean, seems my time is up.’ ‘It is, skipper,’ I confirmed, also smiling to make it easier for him and make him forget the dear ones he would leave behind. He looked at his chronometer and said: ‘Please, sir, just allow me fifteen seconds more to jot down the actual time in my log-book.’ ‘Granted,’ I answered. And he was all happiness that he could write in the correct time. Seeing him so very happy, I said: ‘What about it, Cap’n, would you mind giving me your chronometer? I reckon you can spare it now since you won’t have any use for it any longer, because aboard the ship you will sail from now on you won’t have to worry about time at all. You see, Cap’n, as a matter of fact my hourglass was smashed by a British cannon ball fired by a drunken British gunner in the wrong direction, and so I think it only fair and just that I should have in exchange for my hourglass a British-made chronometer.’ ”

  “Oh, so that’s what you call that funny-looking little clock—a chronometer. I didn’t know that,” Macario broke in.

  “Yes, that’s what it is called,” the hungry man admitted with a grin of his bared teeth. “The only difference is that a chronometer is a hundred times more exact in telling the correct time than an ordinary watch or a clock. Well, compadre, where was I?”

  “You asked the ship’s master for the chro …”

  “… nometer. Exactly. So when I asked him to let me have that pretty timepiece he said: ‘Now, you are asking for just the very thing, for it happens that this chronometer is my personal property and I can dispose of it any way it damn pleases me. If it were the company’s I would have to deny you that beautiful companion of mine. It was perfectly adjusted a few days before we went on this rather eventful voyage and I can assure you, Mr. Bone Man, that you can rely on this instrument a hundred times better than on any of your old-fashioned glasses.’ So I took it with me on leaving the rapidly sinking ship. And that’s how I came to carry this chronometer instead of that shabby outdated hourglass I used to have in bygone days.

  “And I can tell you one thing, compadre, this British-made gadget works so perfectly that, since I got hold of it, I have never yet missed a single date, whereas before that many a man for whom the coffin or the basket or an old sack had already been brought into the house escaped me. And I tell you, compadre, escaping me is bad business for everybody concerned, and I lose a good lot of my reputation whenever something of this sort happens. But it won’t happen anymore now.”

  So they talked, told one another jokes, dry ones and juicy ones, laughed a great deal together, and felt as jolly as old friends meeting each other after a long separation.

  The Bone Man certainly liked the turkey, and he said a huge amount of good words in praise of the wife who had cooked the bird so tastily.

  Entirely taken in by that excellent meal he, now and then, would become absent-minded and forget himself, and try to lick his lips which were not there with a tongue which he did not have.

  But Macario understood that gesture and regarded it as a sure and unmistakable sign that his guest was satisfied and happy in his own unearthly way.

  “You have had two visitors before today, or have you?” the Bone Man asked in the course of their conversation.

  “True. How did you know, compadre?”

  “How did I know? I have to know what is going on around the world. You see, I am the chief of the secret police of—of—well, you know the Big Boss. I am not allowed to mention His name. Did you know them—those two visitors, I mean?”

  “Sure I did. What do you think I am, a heathen?”

  “The first one was what we call our main trouble.”

  “The Devil, I knew him all right,” Macario said confidently. “That fellow can come to me in any disguise and I’d know him anywhere. This time he tried looking like a Charro, but smart as he thinks he is, he had made a few mistakes in dressing up, as foreigners are apt to do. So it wasn’t hard for me to see that he was a counterfeit Charro.”

  “Why didn’t you give him a small piece of your turkey then, since you knew who he was? That hop-about-the-world can do you a great deal of harm, you know.”

  “Not to me, compadre. I know all his tricks and he won’t get me. Why should I give him part of my turkey? He had so much money that he had not pockets enough to put it in and so had to sew it outside on his pants. At the next inn he passes he can buy if he wishes a half dozen roast turkeys and a couple of young roast pigs besides. He didn’t need a leg or a wing of my turkey.”

  “But the second visitor was—well, you know Whom I refer to. Did you recognize Him?”

  “Who wouldn’t? I am a Christian. I would know Him anywhere. I felt awfully sorry th
at I had to deny Him a little bite, for I could see that He was very hungry and terribly in need of some food. But who am I, poor sinner, to give Our Lord a little part of my turkey. His father owns the whole world and all the birds because He made everything. He may give His Son as many roast turkeys as the Son wants to eat. What is more, Our Lord, Who can feed five thousand hungry people with two fishes and five ordinary loaves of bread all during the same afternoon, and satisfy their hunger and have still a few dozens of sacks full of crumbs left over—well, compadre, I thought that He Himself can feed well on just one little leaf of grass if He is really hungry. I would have considered it a really grave sin giving Him a leg of my turkey. And another thing, He Who can turn water into wine just by saying so can just as well cause that little ant walking here on the ground and picking up a tiny morsel to turn into a roast turkey with all the fillings and trimmings and sauces known in heaven.

  “Who am I, a poor woodchopper with eleven brats to feed, to humiliate Our Lord by making Him accept a leg of my roast turkey touched with my unclean hands? I am a faithful son of the Church, and as such I must respect the power and might and dignity of Our Lord.”

  “That’s an interesting philosophy, compadre,” the Bone Man said. “I can see that your mind is strong, and that your brain functions perfectly in the direction of that human virtue which is strongly concerned with safeguarding one’s property.”

  “I’ve never heard of that, compadre.” Macario’s face was a blank.

  “The only thing that baffles me now is your attitude toward me, compadre.” The Bone Man was cleaning up a wing bone with his strong teeth as he spoke. “What I would like to hear is why did you give me half of your turkey when just a few minutes before you had denied as little as a leg or a wing to the Devil and also to Our Lord?”

  “Ah,” Macario exclaimed, throwing up both his hands to emphasize the exclamation. And “Ah,” he said once more, “that’s different; with you that’s very different. For one thing, I’m a human being and I know what hunger is and how it feels to be starved. Besides, I’ve never heard as yet that you have any power to create or to perform miracles. You’re just an obedient servant of the Supreme Judge. Nor have you any money to buy food with, for you have no pockets in your clothes. It’s true I had the heart to deny my wife a bite of that turkey which she prepared for me with all her love put in for extra spices. I had the heart because, lean as she is, she doesn’t look one-tenth as hungry as you do. I was able to put up enough will power to deny my poor children, always crying for food, a few morsels of my roast turkey. Yet, no matter how hungry my children are, none of them looks one-hundredth as hungry as you do.”